A company has successfully overturned Leicester City Council’s decision to refuse permission to collect unwanted clothes from Leicester homes for a breast cancer charity.

Council officials initially rejected a bid from Your Donation Ltd to carry out house-to-house clothes collections and sell them to raise cash for Boot Out Breast Cancer because they said it would pass only 10 per cent of the money it makes to charity.

Guidelines say 75 per cent of the money raised should go to charities.

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However, the firm said the council got its sums wrong when it considered the application in September.

It said, once it had deducted its costs, 82 per cent of the money raised would go into the charity’s coffers.

It decided to appeal against the refusal to the Department of Culture Media and Sport and the council has chosen not to oppose the appeal.

A council spokeswoman said: "When this company first applied for a licence, we were concerned that the percentage of their proceeds going to charity was too low.

“The committee chose to refuse a licence.

“However, we were basing this on the estimated value of clothing picked up at the kerbside.

“After a thorough review of information from the company and the DCMS during the appeal process, it was clear that once the cost of making the clothing saleable has been taken into account, the percentage going to charity goes up considerably, and therefore meets with our policy.

“On this basis, we chose not to contest the company’s appeal against the licensing decision, and a licence has now been granted.”